ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 15, 1997 TAG: 9703170048
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE AND MATT CHITTUM THE ROANOKE TIMES
Graduates compete with ROTC graduates from 301 nonmilitary schools at a six-week summer camp.
The Army will reconsider plans that would have ended preferential treatment for graduates of Virginia Military Institute, Virginia Tech's Corps of Cadets and four other "senior military colleges" who seek active-duty officer commissions, according to a spokesman for U.S. Sen. John Warner, R-Va.
"The Army agreed it will invite the comments of the [six colleges], and they assured us this policy was not in place," Eric Ruff, a spokesman for Warner, said Friday.
The turnabout came after a meeting Thursday between Army officials and senators representing the states where the colleges are located. The other schools are The Citadel in South Carolina, Texas A&M, Vermont's Norwich University and North Georgia College and State University.
Warner's primary concern was that the army put the policy proposal together, but "had solicited no input from the senior military colleges on what this effect might be and what their ideas would be," Ruff said.
Though only a few people a year would be affected at each of the schools - less than 50 VMI cadets and even fewer at Tech seek active-duty Army commissions each year - the proposed change made administrators at Tech and VMI a little nervous.
While the current preference policy is "a tiny leg up," in the words of VMI Superintendent Josiah Bunting III, the schools maintain it gives them a recruitment edge.
"VMI is not the type of school where we open the door and people come flooding in," said Col. Mike Strickler, public relations officer at VMI.
In turn, the schools say the policy benefits the army because their students spend their college years in a military environment.
"It's just one of those things we want to continue to have because we think the kids that are in our environment have a totally different set of circumstances they go [through] in their college life that a normal ROTC cadet does not," Gen. Stanton Musser, commandant of Tech's corps, said last week.
In the past, graduates from those six schools were all but guaranteed an active-duty officer commission with the Army, commissions that have become increasingly precious as military cutbacks have shrunk the number available.
The graduates of the six schools compete with Reserve Officer Training Corps graduates from 301 nonmilitary schools at a six-week camp held each summer for students seeking Army commissions. Students go through military training and are placed in a series of leadership positions along the way, then are rated on leadership ability.
The Army offers active-duty commissions to the top-rated students at the camp, and others get reserve duty.
But professors of military science at the six "senior military schools" have the option of taking a cadet who didn't make the cut and putting him or her on the active-duty list anyway, to the exclusion of a student from an ROTC program who did make the cut.
VMI cadet Blake Lackey figures going through VMI's training regimen ought to be worth a little something extra in the military world.
So should wearing a uniform every day for four or five years, keeping his hair cropped, living in a barracks with strict behavioral rules, and not being able to come and go as he pleases.
"I think a little preferential treatment is warranted based on what we have to put up with," he said.
Lackey is a 23-year-old senior who has already qualified for an active-duty commission, but he said if he had it to do over again, he wouldn't go through VMI if he couldn't get that preferential treatment.
"I came to VMI seeking a commission, and I came knowing that for my troubles I would get something in return," Lackey said. He called it "really upsetting" to think that someone from another college, who parties all week long and puts on a uniform once a week, is put on the same plane as a VMI cadet.
"We're in a military environment 24 hours a day," he said.
Kevin Henderson, a 20-year-old VMI sophomore from McLean who wants to be an Army paratrooper, sees things somewhat differently.
"I want to go into the military. I came to VMI to have the structured environment," he said. "You can go the ROTC route; but, in my opinion, the kids who go to [James Madison University and the University of Virginia], I don't think they know what the military's about."
But then he added: "To be honest, I don't feel like I need preferential treatment. I'd be willing to compete with anybody from a normal civilian ROTC program."
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshots) Lackey, Hendersonby CNB